We are students in Northwestern's Medill IMC [Integrated Marketing Communications] program in a Direct and Integrated Marketing course that teaches social marketing. As a part of our assignments, we need to better establish our professional personas and begin writing blogs on key topics which concern our future professional industries. You can also follow us on twitter using the hash tag #NUSocialIMC. Enjoy!

Monday, May 4, 2015

Building a digitally
enhanced, omni-channel customer experience amid today’s rapidly evolving
technologies is like trying to change a tire on a car as it speeds down the
road. The deluge of data available from online interactions and increased
mobile technology adoption by consumers demands that in-store retail must
become dramatically nimble and integrated with its digital counterpart. As a
graduate student in Integrated
Marketing Communications at Northwestern University, my research has been driven by an
interest in mass market retail. I am always on the lookout for ways that
retailers can sculpt the in-store customer experience and drive loyalty using
analytics and new technologies.

Some predict that the Internet of Things will ignite a fourth industrial revolution, becoming a $200 billion global industry by 2020.

decipher the relationship between
people and other people, people and objects, and objects with each other. Only
10 billion out of the 1.5 trillion things that could be connected to the
Internet are currently connected. By 2020, 50 billion Internet-connected items
will result in $19 trillion in profits and cost savings. Expect this massive
convergence of machines, data and analytics to become a $200 billion global
industry. (Source: CMO.com)

Retailer’s Advantage

Inventory becomes
seamless. IoT technologies track in-store items so that when something is sold,
an RFID chip sends a request to replenish it on the store shelves. Item sales
can be tracked in real-time to give buyers a more accurate picture of what is
selling well and what is not. The chips also give salespeople and customers
insight into availability of similar items in other locations.

Disruption:Wearable Devices

Connected to the IoT
will be wearable devices. More than ⅔ of all consumers plan to buy connected
technology for their homes by 2019, and nearly half say the same for wearable
technology. (Source: CMO.com) Walker explains that wearable devices are
forecasted to become so significant that each person’s smartphone will become a
hub for their own Personal Area Network (PAN)consisting of wearable gadgets such as health sensors, smart
watches & jewelry and sensors embedded in apparel. Wearable devices will
communicate with apps on the smartphone in the PAN, as well as other in-store
sensors, to provide details on the consumer so intricate that retailers may be
able to predict what consumers want to buy without before they even know they
need it.

Retailer’s Advantage

Retailers can use
information from wearable devices to gain a complete view of the customer
journey. Technology in a consumer’s alarm could connect with the coffee maker
to start brewing coffee before he awakes, and if the coffee supply is low,
technology could contact the grocery retailer to deliver more coffee by the
time he returns home from work. With such detailed insight, consumers will soon
not even have to think about when to purchase.

Disruption:In-store WiFi

Customer loyalty will be won by retailers who
embrace how and when the consumer wants to do business. 68% of today’s connected consumers use a mobile device inside a store.
This changes the definition of how a retail store operates and how it must
engage with them. In How Retailers are Using Big Data to Deliver Greater Customer
Insight, Andy McCue reveals that in the
past, retailers not only have not provided WiFi service, but some have even
blocked it inside their stores to avoid “showrooming” practices where consumers
locate items of interest but then price shop online to purchase at a lower
price. But providing free WiFi to customers can actually benefit retailers.

Retailer’s Advantage

Using a
mobile app or a mobile-enabled website while inside the store, customers can
scan barcodes to order home delivery, read product reviews and broadcast images
to friends to ask for their opinions. The most compelling benefit of in-store
WiFi is that personal customer data can be collected as shoppers log on inside
the store. With this information, retailers can analyze how frequently shoppers
visit stores and gather mobile browsing behavior and specific demographics
information. McCue mentions that some research even shows that stores who
advertise free in-store WiFi can influence consumers to shop there instead.

Tesco innovation is a virtual store built in a subway in South Korea where commuters can use mobile phones to order goods from a wall of products.

Disruption:Big Data

Brick-and-mortar retailers who also
maintain an ecommerce store have an advantage over online-only retailers. As
large retailers begin to bridge data from in-store transactions and online
interactions, this combination will give them a significant advantage over
digital retail. In his article McCue asserts that big data metrics are
necessary to facilitate individualized shopping experiences. Consumers with
less time and more technology want instant rewards, and they want to build
relationships with brands over multiple channels.

Retailer’s Advantage

Retailers
can analyze this massive deluge of data to precisely target customers,
improving operational and promotional efficiencies. They can isolate specific
customer segments and use predictive analytics to identify trends such as timing of shopping trips and
product preferences. This allows them to personalize shopping and even
pair this knowledge with new beacon technology to engage customers early and
secure their loyalty, sometimes even before they walk in the door.

Disruption:Beacons & Geofencing

The combination of location sensing devices
and mobile apps opens the door for a whole new generation of personalized
customer service and marketing communications. McCue continues his discussion with beacons, wireless
sensors that use Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology to communicate with and send data tosmartphones within a given
distance. Geofencing usesthe location data insmartphones so that, for example, when a customer
gets within a certain distance of a store, their phone alerts them that they
have received an offer for that store.

Retailer’s Advantage

Beacons
have many uses, from directing customers to the location of items they are
shopping for, to delivering discounts in real-time. Beacons can also be used to
make mobile payments, speeding up the checkout process. Beacons collect
consumer data as well.

In 2012
a Guatemalan shoe retailer won the Cannes Lion award for a gamification app
that used geofencing to poach shoppers from nearby competitors. When a shopper
walked into a rival store, the Meat Pack Hijack app would take over the screen
with a countdown that started with a 98% discount that dropped by 1% every
second that it took the shopper to get to the Meat Pack store. The app
automatically froze the countdown as soon as the shopper crossed the store threshold.
One shopper received a whopping 89% discount on his shoes when he was able to
run to the store in 9 seconds.

What can you do today
that will help you prepare to leverage and manage these impending market
disruptions?

1 – Invest in
knowledgeable personnel and empower them to succeed.People are the key to
in-store retailing success. In the end, people buy from people. Exemplary
customer service by mobile-enabled associates is an edge that online retailers
do not have and cannot compete with. An online-only store cannot manage the
finite details that human empathy can mitigate, such as making the call to
cross the boundary that separates a customer from a higher loyalty level to
secure their business.

2 – Get proactive, pull
out your hypothetical spatula and flip any fears around negative feedback into
a focus on consumer needs. Soon traditional B2B and B2C approaches will become
dated in comparison to a more personalized and self-directed
Business-to-Individual (B2i) approach. Retailers must look at every customer
touchpoint - both in-store and online - as an opportunity to start a relevant, two-way
conversation with the customer. Understand howthe purchase process looks
from the customer’s perspective. Map out the purchase cycle from the customer’s
point of view, and get feedback from the customer to guide you.

3 – Develop a
long-range plan for how you will manage data to personalize the shopping
experience. Keep an open mind and subscribe to new ways of thinking that help
you to leverage technology to work in your favor. Break your unique vision down
into steps and tackle the changes one at a time, over a long period of time,
logically and methodically. In his blog post The
Future of Retail is the End of Wholesale, retail prophet Doug Stephens describes the
future of brick-and-mortar retail as more like a tradeshow floor, the

Retail prophet Doug Stephens writes that in the future, stores will look more like galleries and consumers will use social media
provided at the point of purchase to read peer reviews or create their own.

center of
an omnichannel experience where consumers can shop brands order virtually from
many sources instead of pulling items off of shelves to buy them immediately.
Stores will look more like galleries and consumers will use social media
provided at the point of purchase to read peer reviews or create their own.
Stephens asserts that “the store in essence will become an immersive and
experiential advertisement for the products it represents and a direct portal
to the entire universe of distribution channels available.”

Markets are becoming
increasingly commoditized as technologies proliferate. For retailers to win the
price war, they must learn how to use customer experience as the
differentiator. Retailers that refocus on a customer-centric B2i approach by
using market disruptors as tools to serve customers will be the ones who create
a digital in-store experience that meets expectations and wins customer
loyalty.

Rock your store like
it’s a trade show?How do you think retail stores will look and operate in the future? What
would consumers gain and what would be lost if stores were to turn into
showrooms where customer experience becomes the central focus instead of the products?

@KamiLP Kami Periman is a
graduate student at Northwestern University and will earn an M.S. in Integrated
Marketing Communications in 2016. She has over 15 years of experience in
public relations and promotions, trade show and event management, corporate communications
and content development. During her studies she has cultivated a new-found passion for marketing analytics and an interest in enhancing the retail customer
experience.